Allies smash Nazi thrusts below Rome
Counterattack by tanks halted; 50 enemy planes downed
By C. R. Cunningham, United Press staff writer
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WLB to speed pay primer as aid to ‘white collars’
Simple method of obtaining salary increases promised after Senate holds hearing
By Fred W. Perkins, United Press staff writer
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Dry party candidate’s kin called drunken driver
Los Angeles, California (UP) –
C. Arthur Watson, brother of the candidate for President on the Prohibition Party ticket, awaited a hearing today on a drunk driving charge.
Watson, a radiographer, did not say whether he would vote for his brother in the next election.
Watson’s attorney said he hadn’t realized what the effects of a cocktail taken after cough drops would be. The effects included an auto accident.
Daughters of slain woman cleared by ‘lie detector’
‘Clean bill of health’ given to them; each one asked: ‘Did you murder your mother?’
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Axis activity hit –
U.S. shipment of oil to Spain hinted halted
Berne: Franco’s country may cut ties to Hitler
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It’s U.S. 8th Air Force –
Cronkite: ‘Kid,’ two years old today, gives old man Hitler ‘ell
By Walter Cronkite, United Press staff writer
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Hoyt: Japs murdered bulk of 50,000
Former OWI official hits censorship practices of government
New York (UP) –
Palmer Hoyt, former OWI Domestic Branch director, said in a signed magazine article criticizing the U.S. government’s censorship practices today that the Japs have “brutally murdered most of the 50,000 prisoners taken at Bataan.”
Asserting that the Japs still hold 25,000 American nationals in prison camps, Mr. Hoyt said he did not agree with “some of our leaders” who withheld publication of the fate of Bataan prisoners for fear of retaliation against the “unfortunate hostages” still remaining in Jap hands.
Cleared by censors
The article, to be published next week in The American Magazine, censures military authorities for holding up the release of much vital war news usually on the contention that secrecy is necessary for “reasons of security.” The account was cleared by the Office of Censorship, headed by Byron Price, which he said has taken a “common-sense” attitude.
Mr. Hoyt’s account was released only a few hours after the joint War and Navy Department announced that 7,700 Americans had been tortured and murdered in Jap atrocities.
Crushed by trucks
Mr. Hoyt wrote:
We haven’t known for two years that the Japanese brutally murdered most of the 50,000 prisoners taken at Bataan. They marched them through deadly heat without water, although they had thousands of available vehicles. And they crushed the thousands of men who did not die from exhaustion and thirst by running trucks though their columns.
Mr. Hoyt revealed that military authorities last December withheld for two weeks the story of the attack of German bombers on the Italian port of Bari, in which 17 allied ships were sunk and 1,000 men were killed or wounded.
Danger withheld
Mr. Hoyt continued:
When the Aleutians were seized by the Japanese, there was no hint of the awful danger of our position. Much of our military and naval activities in those regions had to remain military secrets but there could have been no justification for completely drawing the curtain.
That kind of censorship lulls us into indifference and may, if we put up with it, destroy our freedom.
Mr. Hoyt also criticized government officials who warned repatriates arriving recently on the exchange liner Gripsholm against talking of Jap atrocities foe fear of reprisals among prisoners still held by the Japs.
Sees reaction
He said:
I don’t agree with this. If we tell the story of Japanese bestiality, frankly and boldly, and as a part of each day’s news, I think the Japanese will treat their captives better. With the war going against them, they will fear to do otherwise.
Mr. Hoyt said he did not charge there was:
…malicious obstructionism or a sinister conspiracy to withhold the truth from the people of this nation.
It is simply that there are too many men in the Army and Navy, sustained by too many like men in civil life, who do not think it necessary to keep the people informed.
Rabaul sector hit by biggest bomb raid yet
Americans intensify move to sever supply lines to Jap base
By Don Caswell, United Press staff writer
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Editorial: Jap atrocities
Nothing that has happened in this war has so shocked the American people as the Army and Navy report on Jap atrocities. The eyewitness story of the starving, the torture, the deliberate murder of more than 5,000 American and Filipino soldiers captured on Bataan and Corregidor seems too terrible for belief. But it is true. Three American officers, after a year’s imprisonment, escaped to tell the awful truth.
In this country there is a mighty surge of indignation. Our sympathy goes out to all the families of the victims, who fought and suffered and died for us. We are choked by wrath against the bestial criminals.
But our anger will not help the dead, will not hurt the guilty Japs. Emotion is not enough. We must do something about it, more than swear or weep.
Here at home, we may feel there is nothing much we can do. But there is. Nothing very dramatic, and nothing heroic certainly. But we can help win the war. The fighting front does depend on the home front. And we are the home front – all of us little people, doing little jobs, which add up to such a vastly important total.
We make the home morale, which sustains or undermines the spirit of our fighting men at sea and in the skies and in the foxholes and in the prison camps. We can strengthen that morale. We can be ashamed to think, much less speak, of our own petty inconveniences and minor sacrifices compared with the real sacrifices. We can refrain from the partisan bickering that wears away national unity.
We can put an end to strikes and slowdowns that hold back production. We can stop the profiteering and selfish maneuvering for business advantage. We can speed up the flow of planes and munitions and ships, without which our Army and Navy cannot avenge the victims of prison camps in the Philippines.
And we can be on guard against the insidious whispers and the vile propaganda of a few politicians and newspapers, which play upon our hatred of the Jap criminals to divide us from our European allies.
When you are told that our government is fighting for British and Russian interests in Europe and sacrificing American interests in the Pacific, don’t believe it. That is not true.
When you are told that administration politics determines military strategy in the Southwest Pacific to the detriment of Gen. MacArthur, don’t believe it. That is not true.
When you are told that the best way to lick the Japs is to forget about Hitler, don’t believe it. That is not true. This is a global war and we must win a global victory with our allies – or lose the war and lose the peace.
What a blessed relief it would be if we could turn on those Jap fiends, who have starved and tortured and murdered our men in the prison camps, and wipe them out tomorrow, or next week, or next month! But swinging blind won’t help. It will only delay the knockout. There is no quick way, no easy way. The steady way is the sure way.